OpenAI bought a podcast for more than $100M

Hello again my friend,

Last week, OpenAI bought a podcast for over $100M (that’s over one-hundred-million-dollars).

Not a technology company. Not an AI startup. Not a research lab. A podcast. With two hosts, a small team, and a three-hour daily livestream about tech news that typically pulls a few thousand live viewers.

TBPN, the Technology Business Programming Network, sold to OpenAI for what the Financial Times reported was in the "low hundreds of millions" (the actual amount wasn’t shared). An absurd amount, by typical standards, when you realize it’s ~18 months old.

The show launched in late 2024 and has ~58,000 YouTube subscribers. Not a lot of subscribers by typical ‘creator’ terms, but it’s the right audience, (more on this later).

Before getting into the details, I gotta say, I’ve been so torn over this.

For the founders, it’s a super smart move. No question. They got a life-changing amount of money in less than two years.

But I’m more stuck on what this deal signals for the rest of us and for “trust” online, in general.

For creators. For media. For anyone building something with their name on it and wondering what the endgame looks like. This is it.

But did it come at the expense of selling out so hard that nobody cares anymore? Or is the amount so good that it doesn’t matter?

And does it even make sense for a business to buy a podcast in this situation?

There’s a lot to take away from this.

Let’s lock in.

TBPN is a daily live show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, both former tech founders, with Dylan Abruscato running the business side (getting advertising deals for the show). It airs three hours a day on YouTube and X in a livestream, Monday through Friday. They cover real-time tech and business news with interviews from the most powerful people in the industry. Zuckerberg. Nadella. Benioff. Cuban. And yes, Altman himself, multiple times.

Think of it as SportsCenter for Silicon Valley, and the comparison isn't just metaphorical.

The two hosts wear suits on a set, with the big TVs, the flashy sponsor logos, and holding up newspapers on camera. But not The Wall Street Journal. They've printed the biggest tweets in tech onto those pages and they're riffing on them live.

It's not a pre-recorded, heavily edited production. It's a livestream. Guests pop in and out over the three hours, CEOs show up mid-broadcast, react to breaking news in real time, and leave. The energy is loose, fast, and considered fun to watch. The New York Times called it "Silicon Valley's newest obsession."

Again, a tiny audience by traditional media standards, the show pulled in about $5 million in advertising revenue in 2025 from sponsors like Ramp, Plaid, Google's Gemini, and the New York Stock Exchange. It was on track to exceed $30 million in 2026.

Then OpenAI came calling with the acquisition.

The show now sits inside OpenAI's Strategy organization, reporting to Chris Lehane, the company's chief global affairs officer, known for political narrative work going back to the Clinton White House (oh boy) and more recently the crypto super PAC Fairshake.

OpenAI says TBPN will maintain full editorial independence and continue choosing its own guests. I do not believe the sentiment. They can wordplay this however they want, OpenAI owns them now, the show’s no longer impartial. To be fair, the show was never that critical anyway (you can’t piss off potential sponsors too much).

The hosts say they're excited to move "from commentary to real impact." The advertising business is being shut down entirely.

Fun fact: Hays has known Altman for over a decade and was an investor in Altman's first company. So this isn't exactly a cold transaction between strangers. They were presumably friends with a history.

This part is nagging at me because I believed it and I was wrong to.

For at least five years now, the conventional wisdom has been that podcasting is oversaturated. Too many shows. Too hard to grow. Not enough payoff. Two guys talking business? We have plenty of those, thanks.

And yet here we are. Two guys talking business just sold for more than most venture-backed startups ever raise. For more than most business ever see.

Format alone clearly wasn’t the ‘it’ factor. There are thousands of podcasts with guys talking about business. But let’s look at the audience.

TBPN's typical live viewership is a few thousand people at a time. That's it.

But those few thousand people aren't random "wantrepreneurs" watching YouTube videos non-stop. They're founders, investors, and executives who collectively control billions of dollars in capital.

A CEO of a big tech company might make $500K+ personally. But as the CEO, they have millions to spend on tech platforms, advertising, professional services, events, and infrastructure. Advertising (getting in front of) these people specifically is worth a lot. And when thousands of them tune in every day, the advertising value isn't measured by viewer count. It's measured by the purchasing power ‘in the room.’

That's why sponsors like Ramp and Google Gemini were lining up despite modest viewership numbers. That's why the show was on track for $30 million in ad revenue in its second year.

TBPN chased density. Think about what you’d care about more if you’re trying to make money:

The lesson isn't that anyone can start a podcast and get rich. The lesson is that the right audience, no matter how small, is worth more than anyone thought possible, especially when you can keep the attention (even being in the background while they work) for 3 hours.

A lot of the early commentary has focused on the price tag being absurd. A Wharton M&A professor said he doesn't get it. One newsletter writer called it "dumb." Ben Thompson at Stratechery said the purchase "makes no sense." Daniel Newman of Futurum Group said OpenAI is "chasing vibes."

I get the skepticism. But the math is not the worst.

TBPN was on track for $30 million in ad revenue in 2026. That's real, proven, fast-growing revenue from blue-chip sponsors. If the deal was in the "low hundreds of millions,” say $150 to $200 million, that's roughly five to seven times their projected annual revenue.

For a media property growing at that rate, with that audience profile, that's not insane. Plenty of SaaS companies trade at higher multiples with less impressive growth trajectories.

Was it a premium? Absolutely. They’re less than two years old. But the people calling it an outrageous overpay are mostly looking at subscriber counts and missing the revenue story. There was a real business underneath it.

That said, there's massive key-man risk. TBPN is John and Jordi. If they leave, get bored, or lose their edge, the asset is worth very little. OpenAI isn't buying a platform or a technology. They're buying two people's credibility and energy. That's a fragile thing to spend nine figures on.

More importantly, does OpenAI owning the show mean that the viewers will find it lame and just stop watching? That’s also a very real risk.

So, no they didn’t ‘overpay’ per se. But they paid a premium for new business with a notoriously fickle audience.

The official line is that TBPN had already built exactly the kind of authentic space they needed. Rather than recreate it from scratch, they decided to buy it.

That's part of the story for sure. But I think there are three deeper motivations:

First, perception management ahead of IPO. OpenAI is reportedly preparing for a late 2026 IPO. AI polls poorly with the general public. Owning a friendly, credible media outlet that reaches the exact people who influence tech narratives is a smart pre-IPO play. As The Wrap put it, OpenAI is signalling that "success in AI depends on perception as much as product."

Second, taking it away from their competitors. This might be the most underrated angle. OpenAI buying TBPN means Google can't. Meta can't. Anthropic can't. It goes a long way in such a competitive space.

The show was already hosting all of their CEOs. Taking it off the board is a defensive play as much as an offensive one. Even if TBPN doesn't move the needle much for OpenAI's brand, the fact that no competitor can have it (and potentially realize better gains with it) is worth something.

Third, the acqui-hire element. The company was explicit about wanting the hosts' "amazing comms and marketing instincts" for work beyond the show. In a world where companies are hiring "Heads of Storytelling" and professional "world builders," OpenAI went straight to the finish line, acquiring proven talent that already has the audience, rather than building an in-house content operation from zero.

It’s the exact kind of thing you do when you have a lot of money to spend, and you’d prefer spending money than time.

Just buy outlets with the reputation you want, amongst the viewers you wish you had.

This deal suggests content is (and will increasingly become) strategic. Beyond marketing to get me, you, and our friends to sign up. It’s about having companies spend millions with them every year, about the upcoming IPO, and bigger things.

A few implications worth sitting with:

Content roles are going up, not down. But not for content. For trust.

Every time AI discourse heats up, people panic about content jobs disappearing. And that’s partially true. But the irony is that TBPN isn’t an AI show. It’s two guys riffing about business like they’re on Sportscenter in the early 2000s. And it worked.

So if owning authentic human voices is this valuable, then every role adjacent to it, podcasting, newsletters, storytelling, community building, content strategy, becomes more important. It’s just that there may be fewer roles overall because AI can actually do more of the admin, organizing, etc.

Major businesses are considering buying an audience too. HubSpot bought The Hustle. Stripe bought Indie Hackers. Now OpenAI bought TBPN. This is not the first time it’s happened, and it’s not just a fluke. Every company with a communications challenge is now thinking:

“do we hire a Head of Storytelling and build it in-house over three years, or do we just buy a creator who already has the audience and staff around them later?”

Some will build. Some will buy. Either way, the demand for people who can actually do this work goes up.

If you're applying as a Head of Storytelling, are you telling any stories of your own? You should be. Coogan and Hays didn't pitch OpenAI a content strategy deck (I assume). They had a live show with real viewers and real revenue. The portfolio is the product.

If you want to work in content, storytelling, or audience building at the highest level, the best proof of competence is the work you're already doing in public.

The right audience, watching a lot. Again, subscriber and view counts are modest. But the value-per-viewer is huge. If there’s ever been a reason to ignore a million views for “going viral,” it’s this. The question is who is listening/watching/reading.

The thing is: You can buy a voice. You can't buy the trust that made it worth listening to. OpenAI frankly knows they’re being seen as more of a “bad guy” with Sam Altman controversy and the OpenAI board changes. The fact that they were meant to be a not-for-profit, and changed that, killed their credibility.

It’s only gotten worse. It’s a big part of why people are happy for the TBPN guys, but find the whole deal lame.

“The bad guys bought this, and now I just don’t find it fun anymore,” may not be the exact words to describe how they feel, but they’re close.

I respect what Coogan and Hays built. The speed, the positioning, the audience quality, the monetization, it’s unreal media entrepreneurship. If someone offered me life-changing wealth for something I'd built in two years, I'd take it too. I'm not sitting up here pretending otherwise.

And that’s the part about this that feels gross to say, but is also very true. For that kind of money (for a podcast), it’s hard to call them “sellouts.” At that point, it’s smart.

Because being a “sellout” used to mean taking money at the expense of something or someone else.

The stereotype is in politics. The local hero becomes the mayor, and is tempted by the money real-estate sleaze balls offer him to tear down the community center in exchange for a dirty cell tower or something. That politician sold out his community in that scenario, and that’s the wrong kind of sellout.

Two guys reading tweets on Twitter didn’t sell out anybody. The only thing about this particular deal that could make them sellouts later (in a bad way), is if OpenAI actually does become that evil AI company that fucks all our lives up. Even then, it’s a podcast watched by maybe 10,000 tech people at a time.

So would I take the money? Yeah, I probably would. But to be fair, with that kind of growth, I’d consider something else too. TBPN was on pace to make $30M in 2026 anyway. What happens if they found a way to 3x their revenue, to $90M in 2027? What if they were the ones to buy a platform and scale that up with their existing distribution?

Big news, and a lot to think about.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks, as always, for reading.